Social Events
aurellia and I were talking this evening about ways to bring people together in a social context, without using games as an excuse. Some ideas we came up with were:
1) Pot luck dinners - everyone brings a dish to share. I've organised two of these in the past, borrowing the idea from work. At the last one, someone also suggested bringing along the recipes to share. EDIT: elleuba also suggested a themed pot luck. aslan suggested a Death by Chocolate day - a pot luck with chocolate-based food.
2) Origami folding session - we'd need to organise origami paper, and a few patterns of varying difficulty.
3) Shopping trip - shopping for what would be very dependent on the people involved.
4) Wine and cheese night.
5) Philosophy discussion - decide on a topic ahead of time, give people a few days to think about it, and then meet up to discuss that topic.
6) Pancake day - everyone sits around and talks, and takes turns to go up to the stove and make themselves a pancake. When you're cooking pancakes one at a time, it takes a couple of hours for everyone to feel full, so that results in lots of conversation.
7) D&M day.
8) Writing a story in a group - we tried this earlier by email, but it didn't get very far. Perhaps it would work better with people sitting around a table, passing the story on every 15 minutes. Or longer than 15 minutes, but in that case we'd need something to amuse the people who aren't writing. Possibly multiple stories?
EDIT: more ideas that people have suggested:
9) Waffle day (suggested by harkon)
10) High tea (suggested by elleuba)
11) Cocktail night.
12) Stitch and Bitch (suggested by sylver_spiders)
13) Miniature painting (sylver_spiders)
14) Random themed discussions, eg. people's most meaningful songs, or favourite youtube clips. (sols_light)
15) Movie night (might be difficult to get this to meet the criterion of encouraging conversation, but it could be done). (sols_light)
16) Book club (parakleta)
This post is just to throw the ideas out there and gauge interest. If you'd be interested in any of the above, please comment to say which ones. Also, if you have suggestions for the above events, or other ideas for social events, with an emphasis on meaningful conversation rather than games, we'd love to hear them!
1) Pot luck dinners - everyone brings a dish to share. I've organised two of these in the past, borrowing the idea from work. At the last one, someone also suggested bringing along the recipes to share. EDIT: elleuba also suggested a themed pot luck. aslan suggested a Death by Chocolate day - a pot luck with chocolate-based food.
2) Origami folding session - we'd need to organise origami paper, and a few patterns of varying difficulty.
3) Shopping trip - shopping for what would be very dependent on the people involved.
4) Wine and cheese night.
5) Philosophy discussion - decide on a topic ahead of time, give people a few days to think about it, and then meet up to discuss that topic.
6) Pancake day - everyone sits around and talks, and takes turns to go up to the stove and make themselves a pancake. When you're cooking pancakes one at a time, it takes a couple of hours for everyone to feel full, so that results in lots of conversation.
7) D&M day.
8) Writing a story in a group - we tried this earlier by email, but it didn't get very far. Perhaps it would work better with people sitting around a table, passing the story on every 15 minutes. Or longer than 15 minutes, but in that case we'd need something to amuse the people who aren't writing. Possibly multiple stories?
EDIT: more ideas that people have suggested:
9) Waffle day (suggested by harkon)
10) High tea (suggested by elleuba)
11) Cocktail night.
12) Stitch and Bitch (suggested by sylver_spiders)
13) Miniature painting (sylver_spiders)
14) Random themed discussions, eg. people's most meaningful songs, or favourite youtube clips. (sols_light)
15) Movie night (might be difficult to get this to meet the criterion of encouraging conversation, but it could be done). (sols_light)
16) Book club (parakleta)
This post is just to throw the ideas out there and gauge interest. If you'd be interested in any of the above, please comment to say which ones. Also, if you have suggestions for the above events, or other ideas for social events, with an emphasis on meaningful conversation rather than games, we'd love to hear them!